Part 8 - Gods and Wolves

Chapter 136 - They Had it Coming

Miles, Gwen and the Doctor made their way back to the TARDIS which was still parked on the roof top.

"If this is affecting multiple schools all across the city, there has to be a central place. Somewhere all the information and data is stored." The Doctor said, flipping switches and hammering stuff into a keyboard of some sort.

"You must be able to trace the signal back to it." Said Miles.

"Yes. This should only take a moment."

After just a few seconds, there was a ping. The Doctor slammed down the levers and the TARDIS started to make its signature noise.

The spiders and Time Lord exited the TARDIS, finding themselves in a brightly lit cave of some sort. Computers churned away at incoming information.

"I guess we just pull the plug and the problem's solved." Said Gwen.

"Exactly. Let's find it."

The Doctor went down a corridor while Miles and Gwen searched this cavern. Suddenly, there was laughter behind them. They jumped clear just as a chunk of rock flattened the spot they had just been in. Wolf Spider continued to laugh.

"There's no escape now! I will kill you both and solve the Paradigm, then I will become a god!"

"That's what all this is about? Max just went and asked nicely." Gwen replied.

She leapt onto the roof of the cave and kicked a stalactite off. It shattered as it struck the floor, distracting Wolf long enough for Miles to get in with a venom strike. Their enemy recovered, leaping back at Miles who jumped out the way only to get his foot wrapped by one of the spider legs. He scrabbled at the stony floor, trying to get a handhold. As he was doing so, he noticed a switch leading to an extension cable into which the computers were plugged in. That was it: their way to stop Wolf from solving the Skasis Paradigm. Gwen kicked Wolf in the back of the head, forcing him to let Miles go so he could steady himself. Miles scrambled straight for the socket and pulled the plug. Instantly, the green symbols and code on the screens disappeared to be replaced by blackness. Miles jumped back into the fight, sparing Gwen from a punch that would likely have smashed her skull in.

"No!" Wolf yelled, realising the computers were off.

"Too late!" Miles replied as he charged another venom strike.

However, Wolf's rage only made him stronger. Miles found himself taking the heaviest hit he could remember taking. He smashed into the ground, crashing through the tables and causing the wall to crack a little. Gwen jumped on Wolf's shoulders to stop him from finishing the job. She wrapped her legs around his neck and tried to break it knowing that the old spider people's sentiment of never killing was too dangerous to stick with in this case. However, Wolf flung her off and advanced at her. His spider legs smashed into the rock around her as she rolled from side to side to dodge them. To start with, he only attacked with one at a time but quickly adapted to two, then three, then four. Gwen found rolling little use now as she swatted them away. Suddenly, she felt something tear into her body just below her rib cage. She gasped as the air from her lungs was sucked out. All of her other senses were drowned out as the pain took hold. She saw Miles stagger to his feet and yell her name, but couldn't hear the words over the sound of her heart thumping. Each beat pushed more blood from the wound, and very quickly the darkness took her.

Wolf Spider laughed as Miles sprinted over to her broken body.

"I'll let you suffer. It just makes the final kill easier."

His enemy escaped, but he didn't care. He held Gwen's head, shouting for help even though he was pretty sure the Doctor must be dead. Instead of the Time Lord, help came in the shape of a jet of energy from which emerged Max. The God knelt down quickly and pressed on the wound with his hand.

"Dimension 9578. Their medical tech is some of the most advanced in the multiverse. If anyone can help her, they can."

It had been some hours since Gwen was taken into an operating theatre in dimension 9578. Max sat in the waiting room, his eyes closed as he tried to concentrate. Miles was pacing up and down. On what must have been his five-hundredth length of the room, he stopped in front of Max.

"You can see the future. Tell me she'll be OK."

"If I did that, I'd be neither lying nor telling the truth."

Miles tried to figure out what he meant by that himself, but couldn't.

"What do you mean? Can't you see the future?"

"What I see are billions of futures. I don't know which one will happen, just the ones that are most likely to happen. Time's a bit like Schrodinger's cat: you don't know what will happen until it happens. You just know all the possibilities."

Miles sat down next to him and buried his face in his hands.

"I hate this. Waiting is the worst thing in the world, especially when there's nothing you can do." He muttered.

Max nodded, opening his eyes.

"For the first time in well over a billion years, I'm powerless."

"Can't you snap your fingers and help her?"

"No. If I messed it up I could kill her. I won't risk it."

"Can you speed up time and make this waiting go faster?"

"No. I can only slow time down from its relative state."

There was a moment of silence, then Miles asked:

"Can you see what's happening in there?"

Max nodded, closing his eyes again.

"She's still in critical condition. They have her on oxygen, but they've managed to stop the bleeding."

"Is she alive?"

"Just. Her heart's beating and her mind is still working." He paused before going on. "She can see light, but she's scared to go to it. She wants to go home, but she can't find the way."

That had to be one of the most depressing things Miles had heard all day. He had been trying to refrain from thinking about what would happen to Gwen if she died, but now he let himself.

"What will happen to her if she dies?" He asked Max.

"She'll go to Bastria where she'll join all the other dead spider people. The seven Animators will let her move freely between worlds there, but most people stay in their respective afterlives."

"Could I see her if it happened?"

"I can take you, yeah."

Miles nodded slowly. Hearing this he felt a little more at peace with the thought of losing her, but he had next to no time to ponder it. A bright display of colours announced the arrival of Miguel who was wearing his spider suit.

"Miles, Max, I need your help. The worlds need your help. The Inheritors have returned."

Miles' blood ran cold, and he couldn't shake the feeling this was yet another of Wolf Spider's plans.

"How? They were turned into babies and Solus is stuck in a weird crystal." He asked, getting to his feet and wiping the tears off his face.

"I don't know. What I do know is Spider-Nanny is dead along with all her family and the Inheritors are gone. They were last spotted by Spider-Cop who was killed shortly after making his report."

"What do we do?"

"What we've done every other time: we fight. With any luck Solus won't come back and you won't have to wield any cosmic superpowers."

"Leave the cosmic superpowers to me if it comes to it." Said Max, also on his feet.

"We need to leave. Where's Gwen?" Miguel continued.

Max and Miles glanced at each other.

"She's being treated. Wolf Spider stabbed her. Someone has to stay and protect her, or the Inheritors will kill her." Miles replied.

"I'll do it." Max volunteered immediately.

"No, I will." Miles replied.

"You won't last a split second if an Inheritor comes knocking."

"I love Gwen. I can't just leave her."

"I love her too, but in like a parent sort of way not like you. I'm pretty sure this is Switzerland, not Alabama."

"But…no, it has to be me."

"No, Dad. If you won't listen to reason, treat it as a God's command or something. Go kick some Inheritor butt, and I'll make sure Mum's alive when you get back."

Miles nodded slowly.

"I trust you, Max. Don't mess this up. I can't lose her."

"She's safer with me than you. Go."

Reluctantly, Miles and Miguel warped away.

It had been nearly four hours since the pair had left. Max was watching what they were up to through his all-seeing closed eyes. His thoughts were interrupted as the door, leading into the corridor which led to Gwen's ward, opened. A medical person appeared with an un-readable expression.

"Are you waiting on news about Miss Stacy?" They asked.

Max nodded.

"I'm glad to report she will live. There's still a lot of work to do, and she's being kept unconscious, but she will recover."

He lightened up.

"Can I go and see her?"

"As I said, she's unconscious, but yes."

"Thanks!"

Max speed-walked through the door, down the corridor and slowed down to enter the ward. Gwen was lying with her eyes closed and an oxygen mask over her face. There were a number of things attached to her, including a couple of needles in her arm which made Max feel a little dizzy thinking about. He hated injections, and he was pretty sure if he ever woke up with them in his arm he'd just flat-out faint until someone removed them. He sat down next to her, glancing down at her injury that was covered in blood-stained bandages. Once a nurse had left the room after finishing cleaning up a number of medical tools, Max put a hand on his mother's forehead and closed his eyes.

Everything was so dark on one side, and so bright on another. Gwen had given up trying to figure out which way led to the way out ages ago, and now lay in a curled up ball in the middle of the void clutching the area where her nearly fatal injury was. It didn't seem to have physically carried across, but she could still feel the agony. Suddenly, she felt like she wasn't alone in this place anymore. She uncurled herself a little and spotted a figure fading into existence. After a few seconds, she recognised it as Max who grinned at her. She tried to sit up, but just ended up groaning in pain.

"Stay there, I'm coming to you."

He took a few steps forward then stopped, frowning. Gwen had moved relative to him, but the black and white hadn't. He shrugged and sat down next to her.

"Hey Mum."

"Hey Max. Is Miles here?"

He felt a little hurt her first question was about Miles, not a 'how are you', but figured it made sense. For all she knew, her husband-to-be was dead.

"He isn't, and I can't bring him here either so you're stuck with me, I'm afraid."

"Anyone's better than nobody. Heck, if it was Adolf Hitler I'd be happy. I guess you can answer a bunch of my questions, though."

"Yep. Hitler couldn't do that. Or he could, but he'd probably just tell you to go to war with everything."

She chuckled quietly, then got down to business.

"Am I dead, Max?"

"Nope, just unconscious. A little touch and go sometimes, but you're alive and expected to recover."

"Then what is this place?"

"This is inside your head."

"You're inside my head? I'm not sure I want you in here. There's a lot I don't want you to see."

"I see everything, whether I like it or not. And that ability doesn't care about your opinion on the matter either."

"Ouch. Sounds like Hitler is here."

"Sure, if you mean you with an Ethereal Plate stuck in you."

"What?"

"Empire joke. You probably wouldn't understand."

She closed her eyes and kept talking.

"In the real world, is Miles OK? What happened to Wolf Spider?"

"Wolfy ran away. Dad's fine, if not scared for your life."

She smiled a little, reassured by the knowledge that the person she loved so much was OK. There was a bit of silence, then Gwen decided to start a conversation. What she remembered of her past life was patchy, and she wanted to know more.

"Max, can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"What was the multiverse like when you were growing up? What was being a spider person like in those days?"

Max didn't reply for a moment as he cast his mind back.

"It was…nice, I guess. I was born a couple of months after your exile on Ardveer ended."

"Ardveer?"

"The Quintari homeworld. I'm sure you'll all cross paths someday. But yeah; things were calm. The Empire was completely mopped up, people went about their lives without much fuss. Some people would commute between dimensions to go to work every day, just like you'd take a car or a train. You could buy dimensional watches as easily as any smartwatch nowadays. I mean, the cheaper ones weren't safe at all. Those rip-off brands that people think they're getting a bargain for and then it all goes wrong. One day you buy one, hop on over to another dimension and start glitching like a madman."

"Must have been great to have so much freedom."

"It was. Until…well…you died. I was only five, only been at school a couple of months, then Dad arrives to pick me up saying you're in hospital. In a couple of weeks, you went from good spirits to forgetting even how to walk and breathe and eat. It was horrible. I never really understood that I was never gonna see you again. Then we were visiting you one time, and Dad went to go and get a drink leaving me and Charlotte with you. You told us you loved us, and that we were the best kids she could ever have, then…that was it. The beeping heart machine did its high pitched squeal and you were gone. I didn't even get to finish saying 'I love you' back."

Gwen held out one of her hands and took Max's. A couple of tears had escaped from his eyes.

"But I came back, right? And what about life as Spider-Boy?"

"You did come back…ten years later when Khahrahk tried and failed to use you to kill Dad. As for being Spider-Boy, I had a suit but Dad just said no. After you died he was never the same again. He became paranoid people would hurt me and Charlotte, so he didn't let us do it. Of course, that didn't stop Charlotte cos she's the most stubborn badass you'll ever meet."

"Miles didn't let you be Spider-Boy?"

"Nope. It took relentless hours of him and resurrected you arguing for him to even give me a chance. He became so obsessed with the Ethereal Legion I sometimes wondered if he actually cared about us. I know he did now, but then I wasn't so sure."

"Do you see that same person in the current Miles?"

"No. The Miles that was my dad had been killed himself, watched his best friend get his throat slit and been handed the broken body of his one year old son. It destroyed both of you, and that's a path I will never let repeat itself. No parent should have to bury their child."

"What do you think of the current me and Miles?"

"I'm not sure. I feel like the family positions are swapped: I'm the dad looking out for his kids and trying to get them to love me like they once did, and you and current Miles are those two kids."

"Does it hurt that we don't love you the same way we did?"

"It reminds me of the Scarlet King. He tore everything I knew apart. His daughter killed my best friend, he forced me to destroy most of the omniverse and make things how they are now."

Gwen squeezed Max's hand, seeing him shudder as he remembered the war.

"I love you, Max."

"You're just saying that, Mum."

"No, I mean it."

"Whatever."

"I've just got a couple more questions."

"Oh?"

"How do I get out of here?"

"You don't. You'll wake up when the time comes."

"Can't you wake me up?"

"If I did that now, you'd be dead."

"That makes sense."

"Anymore questions?"

"Yeah. Why's my spider sense telling me to wake up and fight?"

"That's Bora and Brix about to break into your hospital ward. Don't worry; I've frozen time."

"Wait…the Inheritors?"

"Yeah, they're back. Didn't I mention that's where Dad went?"

"And you're left with me?"

"He didn't want you left alone. You'd just be an easy snack."

"Max, you have to go and stop them. It'll be a massacre."

"I know. Should I come back?"

"Be the spider person your dad didn't let you be, then you can."

"Alrighty."

Max stood up as he unfroze time. Bora and Brix, two of the Inheritors, drew knives and prepared to fight.

"You might find me a little more…challenging than the rest of your prey." Said Max.

"No matter! We will feed on you just the same." Replied Brix.

"Let's put that to the test."

The Inheritors charged, swinging their knives. Max caught the blades, ignoring the cuts they made in his skin, and wrenched them from his opponents' hands. Bora made to grab Furore Mortale from his belt, but as soon as her hand touched the hilt she screamed and turned to nothing more than a pile of ash.

"Oops!" He taunted as he kicked Brix across the room.

A second later, three knives flew out of nowhere and embedded themselves in the Inheritor. Max sighed, sitting down again and placing his hand back on his mother's forehead to go and talk to her again.

Crossovers in this Chapter

- SCP Foundation

You'll notice there's mention of a war with the Inheritors that never happened to the characters from Into the Spiderverse, but I like to imagine that the events of the Spider-Geddon comics happened in the months, maybe couple of years, after the events of the movie. Whether Into the Spiderverse 2 brings in the Inheritors, we'll have to wait and see. But for now that's all you need to know.